App rejected due to 3.1.1 - Business - Payments - In-App Purchase

Question

This is what Apple have written back:

Guideline 3.1.1 - Business - Payments - In-App Purchase

Your app or metadata includes an account registration feature, which is considered an access to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app. Specifically, your app description contains a link to your website where users can register.

This is what they said to resolve the issue:

To resolve this issue, please remove the account registration feature and any other fully qualified links to your site that could indirectly provide access to these mechanisms, such as links to web pages for support, FAQs, product or program details, etc.

The app I'm developing is a B2B app where in a company can buy a subscription via the website and register its employees as users. What Apple is saying is that this is considered an external mechanism and that you should only use in-app purchases. The thing is that even if in-app purchase is implemented, because it is a B2B app and not a B2C, not every user has to buy a subscription, only a company has to buy one. It would help knowing if someone has gone through similar issues and what it took to resolve them.

Answer 1

You will need to go in the resolution centre and explain them in detail your issue. My previous company used to have a B2B app with a company based subscription outside the AppStore. To pass Apple verifications, we had to discuss that with them in details and highlight the fact your app is a B2B one.

Here is an interesting post: https://www.designernews.co/stories/9695-how-do-apps-like-lyft-uber-airbnb-skirt-apples-30-cut-on-each-transaction

Answer 2

RomOne's answer helped us getting our app approved into the appstore. In our case the appeal board concluded with:

*App Store Review Guideline 3.1.1, while the app is free to download, users have to make payment for ****** service. Apps that operate across multiple platforms may allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired elsewhere, provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app.*

After explaining to B2B usage of the app, where companies need to have a subscription and not the employees/users of the app, and stating that this in-app purchase feature would never be used by these users, we finally got our app back in the appstore.